THE KING OF FREEBIES

THIS was a bad week for the Prince of Wales to be seen accepting yet another freebie, flying about the countryside in a borrowed helicopter.

For it was the week his private secretary, Sir Michael Peat, unwisely buried the Pounds 10 million-a-year Prince under a stultifying mountain of statistics designed to make him look frugal.

It was also the week that Charles's Press Secretary, the popular and efficient Colleen Harris, resigned to 'spend more time with my family'.

She did so after it emerged that Sir Michael, an accountant who is a wizard with figures, had also assumed 'overall supervision of Press matters' at St James's Palace. Let's hope he knows what he is doing in this crucial area, for if ever Prince Charles needed the skills of a professional image-polisher such as Colleen, it is now.

Time after time, he has been warned to limit the largesse which he routinely accepts from the rich.

Even his father, Prince Philip, criticises him in front of other members of the Royal Family, on one occasion for taking a party of 22 people aboard the yacht Alexander, borrowed from the highly controversial shipping tycoon John Latsis.

All in all, the two-week jaunt, which included Mrs Camilla Parker Bowles and her two children, Tom and Laura, would have cost the Prince in the region of Pounds 500,000 had he opened his chequebook.

The Prince regularly borrowed the 400ft yacht for summer holidays, and even permitted Latsis described as a 'gangster' in his native Greece and who died in April - to fly him and son Harry out to join it in a jumbo, and William in a Lear jet, both from the Latsis aircraft fleet.

This week, almost as Sir Michael's glossy brochure report on Charles's finances was being issued - ludicrously trying to portray him as a man of simple tastes - the Prince was being collected in a private helicopter.

It had been sent by a rich friend, JCB boss Sir Anthony Bamford, to pick him up at Highgrove and deposit him 15 minutes later and 40 miles away at Bamford's magnificent 6,500-acre estate at Stow-on-the-Wold, Gloucestershire.

Bamford then flew the Prince to Southam, Warwickshire, to watch Harry playing polo. SIR MICHAEL must be aware that the frequency with which Charles accepts favours from the wealthy is the area that provokes most criticism and even mockery from other members of the Royal Family.

A predecessor of Sir Michael who once raised the matter with Charles and suggested, with as much delicacy as he could muster, that it might be a good idea if the Prince resisted such favours, was given short shrift. 'I think these things should be given,' was Prince Charles's astonishing response.

On the other hand, was his reply really surprising, coming from a man who has been raised among such unnatural privilege?

Now, one has to wonder whether Sir Michael Peat, a man of superior confidence in his own abilities and virtually the 'chief executive' of Prince Charles plc, has the nerve to raise the issue again.

The extent of his task in breaking the habit of a lifetime can be seen in the fact that even from the grave, Latsis has continued to featherbed the 54-year-old Prince's life - this, despite the fact that after all his expenses and income tax, Charles is still left with more than Pounds 2million a year to spend on himself, his sons and Mrs Parker Bowles.

In May, when Charles made his annual pilgrimage into retreat in a monastery on Mount Athos, he was flown to Greece courtesy of the Latsis airline, PrivatAir. How this revives memories of the flights that Charles - sometimes with Princess Diana used to accept with alacrity from the late Armand Hammer, often described as the most corrupt tycoon of modern times.

As the world now knows, Hammer used his wealth and power to aggrandise himself by acquaintanceship with the future king.

For his part, the pleasure in being flown in Hammer's luxuriously appointed Boeing 727 produced letters of unctuous gratitude from the Prince.

'My Dear Dr Hammer', he wrote to the billionaire after he and Diana were flown home from America after a royal tour. 'I have so many things to thank you for that I hardly know where to begin. Your kindness in letting us fly back in your 727 was enormously appreciated and I am now thoroughly spoiled for any other form of flying.' Some cynics might see this as a coded request to keep the free flights coming. For the Prince, frankly, appears to be entirely devoid of embarrassment.

Closer to home, last summer, Charles and Camilla not only accepted the use of their friends' Lord and Lady Cavendish's villa in Tuscany, but used the private jet of an American acquaintance the Prince met through one of his charity gatherings to get there.

And for the last dozen years or so, he has enjoyed a week in Provence at the home of the late Baroness Louise de Waldner, mother-in-law of antiques specialist Oliver Hoare, who was involved with Princess Diana.

He also makes an annual trip to Wales - a working visit - when he takes over a house near Welshpool that is the home of the Corbett-Winder family.

Landowner William Corbett-Winder and his wife, Kate, move out so that their friend the Prince, who always brings Camilla, can have the free run of beautiful 300-year-old Vayner Park.

Then there are Charles's six hunting horses that are cared for by his friend, the Greenall brewery heir Lord Daresbury, who has an estate in Cheshire. Not to mention his 16 polo ponies, stabled at the Sultan of Brunei's spread in Oxfordshire.

Indeed, it was revealed this week, that the Prince was keen to offset his considerable polo outgoings against his income tax bill on the grounds that they were a necessary expenditure relating to his charitable work, but Sir Michael overruled him.

It was particularly unfortunate in an off-the-record briefing in Sir Michael Peat's office that preceded the issue of his financial report, that the Prince was said to 'own' only one car, a humble Aston Martin, and one that was pretty old at that.

For the fact is, Charles has chosen to lease most of his fleet of motor cars for many years and, indeed, is not averse to using his position to drive some excellent bargains.

Not so long ago, he was rather taken with the latest Volvo estate and it was arranged for him to lease one. ACCORDING to the dealer involved, he was assured through one of Charles's staff - that, if the price was right and the Prince continued to lease his vehicles over three years, Volvo would receive a royal warrant, joining the august group of tradesmen and companies who can put 'By Appointment' on their letterheads as members of the Royal Warrant Holders' Association.

When three years had passed, no royal warrant had materialised, nor was it on the horizon. So when the contract was renegotiated, the dealer upped the charge to his normal commercial rate. Charles stopped driving Volvos. Of course, it is sycophancy as well as commercial opportunism which induces most benefactors to supply Charles with his freebies, and the temptations to accept them must be almost irresistible.

But can the tough Sir Michael Peat change Charles's ways now that he has assumed almost unassailable powers as the man at his right hand?

One difficulty is that any hint of criticism produces in the future king an avalanche of self-pity. Right now he is going through one of his periodic bouts of gloom. The last time he was in similar mood, at the turn of the year, he took it out on the Highgrove crockery, smashing plates.

Just the other day, over lunch at Highgrove with two old friends, he complained bitterly about his life.

Everyone, he told them, had it in for him and no one understood him - not even his own family.

His guests had heard it all before, though they were taken aback by its intensity, for the last time his gloom had been this deep was at the peak of his marital troubles. With all that

behind him, and with Camilla now safely by his side, it seemed strange that the Prince still sees his unique life in such dark colours.

'In morale terms, he seems to be flat on his back,' says another of his old friends from the polo world.

Clearly, the job that Sir Michael has taken on is bigger than he could possibly have imagined.

On the other hand, members of Charles's circle consider the unflappable bean-counter mentality of the trained accountant to be a pivotal part of the problem.

But then, Charles should have seen this before he agreed to hire him on a salary package said to be worth in the region of Pounds 300,000 with a sumptuous apartment in Kensington Palace with five bedrooms and four bathrooms thrown in.

One reason Charles employed him was the brilliant manner in which Sir Michael introduced changes in the Queen's household at Buckingham Palace as Keeper of the Privy Purse, which is saving her millions. CHARLES also grew to appreciate Sir Michael, who used to sit in on a select family committee comprising the Queen, Prince Philip and Charles. The group would meet to talk over the running of their private estates, and frequently Philip would scold his son. Peat, however, would offer an understanding ear, usually in a telephone call after the meetings.

When he joined the Prince, Peat made no secret of his belief that he could make money for Charles.

And he has been as good as his word. In his very first year, he has introduced changes (some of them in the way the Duchy of Cornwall does its accounts) which have increased Charles's income from the Duchy by a whopping 27 per cent, raising it to almost Pounds 10million.

This, at least, has a put a smile on the troubled face of the Prince of Wales. But Sir Michael has his own way of doing things and does not welcome interference from others.

From the outset, Peat was determined to diminish the influence of a number of key people in the Prince's life, among them the highly able spin doctor Mark Bolland and Charles's longstanding personal assistant Michael Fawcett.

These were no ordinary staff members but men on whom the Prince had come to rely. Without them, he feels vulnerable - witness a string of public relations fiascos reaching back to the Burrell trial that exposed seedy and unseemly goings on behind Palace walls.

Forlornly, he told one friend the other day: 'They have taken everyone away from me.' At Buckingham Palace, Peat's move to St James's was seen as a brilliant manoeuvre that would not only end their mutually damaging rivalry but rein in the profligate Prince.

Some senior courtiers still privately describe Peat as 'the Queen's man' and talk of Charles as 'a wholly owned subsidiary of the Queen'.

This is why, they say, it is time for the Prince of Wales to sacrifice some of the perks that have smoothed such ripples as exist in his life.

But this will not be easy. Only last year, Charles insisted on using the royal train for a trip from Aberdeen to London. It cost the taxpayer Pounds 23,113. He could have made the same journey, first class, for Pounds 180.

Why didn't he do it? According to a retired courtier: 'The Prince just doesn't like getting up early in the morning. The royal train runs to his timetable.' Sir Michael does get up very early - and his arrangement with the Prince has been set to run for another six years. Perhaps by then, the Prince will get up early, too.